It has been said many times that a successful lean practice requires a culture of lean thinking. This culture must be nurtured within leadership, throughout the organization and, ultimately, across the supply chain. The first step in this process is learning; the second is trial; and the third is ...

As the construction industry embraces lean practices to provide greater customer value and reduce waste, one would expect to find new technology applications that support the process. We did a search and found mixed results. There are some applications well known to the industry (BIM, for example), ...

In the early 1990s the construction industry became aware that cost overruns and delays were caused by the longstanding and antiquated construction management model in practice. At that time a group of leading thinkers coalesced and formed the International Group for Lean Construction to develop ...

Last Friday we posted about the once-in-a-lifetime infrastructure construction opportunity resulting from the $57 trillion global investment that analysts expect through 2030. We noted, however, that it won't be "business as usual" because the public sector is embracing lean practices to stretch ...

An historic opportunity is at hand in infrastructure construction. The US needs to fund $3.6 trillion of infrastructure investment by 2020, which is only a small fraction of the $57 trillion required globally by 2030. However, there is a catch. Limited supplies of public capital will require much ...

In an age of global competition and compressed margins many industries are embracing lean manufacturing practices, a system designed by Toyota fifty years ago when it faced the challenge of entering a global automobile market with severely constrained resources.Participants in the construction ...

We are at a crossroads that will change the way construction is managed, and construction contractors will benefit in a big way from this. In order to respond with limited resources to the $3.6 trillion US infrastructure investment need by 2020, project owners will require that the infrastructure ...

If you do a Google search for 'construction product tracking' you will find a number of links to services that track construction equipment, laborers, and labor hours, but you won't find anything about tracking construction products. (That is until you find the link to our recent post: The Instant ...

What are the secrets to outperforming in a very competitive envrionment? Why do some companies thrive while others find competing increasingly difficult? Are some companies just lucky or do they possess some advantages that others do not? The truth is, they DO possess superior advantage. However, ...